Medical procedures these days aren’t just about what happens in the consulting suite, instead there are enormous ongoing monitoring and compliance requirements for certain types of treatments, in particular weightloss surgeries.
Lapbase is a highly specialised and custom monitoring software service to support bariatric surgeons with their weight loss solutions for their patients.
Ongoing monitoring and the ability to trust the data being transmitted back from the patient is essential.
SoftLogic Solutions worked with Lapbase to put in place a comprehensive support and maintenance program that provided them with a reliable escalation level 2 support desk for the tool and took over the management of their existing team to provide best practice software processes.
They conducted a security review, updated the developer toolset to the latest and put in place comprehensive Test Cases, setup a Staging environment and optimised the hosting.
They also provided them with a forward plan to keep rolling out new features, requirements and enhancements to keep pace with medical developments and updates.
Custom software components & environment
The Lapbase monitoring system has a number of elements to the program.
- Surgeon facing management interface for logging and reporting based on their surgery particulars.
- Reporting – both at patient level and aggregated, along with triggers to sound alarms to escalate any identified anomalies with the surgeon.
- Given the nature of the type of personal health information being captured in this system there is a high level of security required for this solution.
- Patient feedback dashboard.
Platform and language
- Originally using Visual Studio 2005 on Windows XP, which was upgraded to Visual Studio 2019 on Windows 10
- ASP.Net 4 Tier Architecture with Stored Procedures
- Microsoft SQL Server
- C#.Net,
- SSIS ETL, SSRS Reporting RDL
The piece of mind that I get now that SoftLogic Solutions has reviewed my security, hosting and processes makes me feel confident that it is in good hands. My team is now being managed using JIRA, and a Staging Server where we now run Automated Testing to confirm each release prior to deployment. I would highly recommend them.
Key challenges and issues
This program of work started with a number of very specific issues that needed to be addressed as part of the overall support and maintenance program for Lapbase.
- Lapbase is specialist medical service provider, not a technology company. One objective was to effectively resource a whole suite of technical based skillsets such as Software Management skills, developers, security, data management, testing and quality assurance, and business analysis, without the ongoing overhead related to maintaining a large team.
SoftLogic Solution was able to provide, as a fixed cost, access to all of the right skills, when and as needed, rather than having to retain these highly specialist skill sets inhouse on the payroll. - This custom software solution does not warrant the need for a full-time staff member, nor for multiple staff with a variety of skill sets. This made the business case for engaging with SoftLogic Solutions very clear.
- The need for a high degree of documentation, monitoring and responsiveness would have been prohibitive if attempting to do this inhouse. SoftLogic bring together a team of the ‘right’ skills that make it very easy to deliver on this as part of the fixed cost.
- A Ticketing system helps Lapbase to engage not only inhouse but to better service their clients by being able to prioritise enhancements based on the greatest need within the surgical community they serve.
How we worked with Lapbase
SoftLogic Solutions has a well-worn path to ‘robust reliability’ for custom software support and maintenance.
The focus on security for Lapbase was paramount, so our ‘process’ was a perfect match for their need.
Phase 1 – Discovery
- Gathering of information from Lapbase to allow a complete understanding
of the software architecture, business processes, and how to test that they are operating
correctly. - Review of existing documentation and followed by a gap analysis to provide an up to date detailed understanding of the system.
Phase 2 – Handover
- SoftLogic Solutions put together a custom dashboard to best suit this highly specialised product to meet the needs of the internal management team at Lapbase.
- A deep dive to familiarise our software development team with the Code
Base and Architecture was then undertaken. - Documenting the current environments, source code, build process, development and staging systems, test Procedures and finalisation of support and maintenance requirements
- Design and set up of Staging environment followed. This involved connecting to Dev/Staging system in a secure manner that allows the workflow, testing regimen to be undertaken – all remotely – so our team can support Lapbase any time of the day, any time of the year.
- Complete documentation on these environments were also created so that there is both visibility and continuity with the environment going forward. Keeping this documentation up to date is built into the program of work.
- Detailed and complex testing plans and cases were created, along with testing team to assure quality assurance to ensure no interruption to the patients and surgeons.
Phase 3 – Transition to Support Operations
- Ongoing SoftLogic Solutions will provide Level 2 and 3 support for these programs. A direct ticketing system allows staff to immediately log an issue, and an escalation process is in place so that no matter when, problems can be addressed as appropriate.
- SoftLogic Solutions is also working with Lapbase to develop a Roadmap and sourced a white label Smartphone Health and Fitness App that is being integrated with Lapbase. This will make life easier for the Surgeon and enhance the patient experience.